Bridge to Nowhere

You may recall a post last week — How Can We Tolerate This? — pointing out a New Times exposé that Miami was requiring homeless sex offenders, whose housing options are severely constrained by local ordinances, to sleep under a bridge on pain of arrest if they were not found there when regularly monitored by their probation officer.

I thought that was pretty disgusting. And that the article was in the grand tradition of muckraking journalism.

Following revelations by New Times that a parking lot under the State Road 836 bridge was being used by probation officers as a dumping ground for homeless sex offenders — and that the lot was located within 2500 feet of eight schools, in violation of a county ordinance — two men were moved from under the bridge and placed … under another bridge. Their new home is under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Surrounded by water, palm trees, and endless traffic, they now, presumably, reside a legal distance from schools.

…

Florida Department of Corrections officers who ordered the men to live in the parking lot won't face punitive actions, DOC spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said in an e-mail. “We are one piece of the puzzle,” Plessinger wrote. “The issue of how Miami-Dade, Florida, and this country deal with sex offenders is one that must be addressed not only by the DOC, but by lawmakers, the court system, and the community as a whole.”

We are, some say, judged by how we treat the least and worst among us. At this point, we can only hope that view is mistaken.